User talk:David Schroder/Arminianism

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[edit] Purpose of Page

This page is a temporary reworking of the Arminianism article per discussions about the Reformed Arminianism, as found on that page, in the Talk: Total depravity, and in the User talk:David Schroder.

This page will be updated until the revision is ready, at which the current Arminianism page will be edited to look like this one. At this point, this page will be deleted.

Start time: 1:30pm EST, February 21, 2006 Goal finish time: February 25, 2006

David Schroder 18:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

I agree that most of the info our Calvinist sisters and brothers use to criticize Arminianism is weak, and, often (not always) shows a monumental misunderstanding of Arminian thought (the opposite is also true). But, Flex, myself, and a few others (notably User:Mkmcconn and User:Jim Ellis) worked diligently a while back to make the Calvinism/Arminianism/Methodist theology articles more acceptable, thorough, and NPOV. What exact problems do you have with these articles? Surely we can fix them.

As far as your new outline, it looks OK to me, but it's hard to really judge until you get "meat" in there. Rather than rewrite the whole thing. what might you add to the current article? KHM03 19:04, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the outline looks good, but the meat will make the difference. BTW, you can create temporary articles in your own personal sandbox rather than making them publicly usable. Try creating User:David_Schroder/Arminianism. We can all still see and edit (I think!) such pages, but they don't show up for people just searching the encyclopedia. --Flex 19:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't think Arminianism is at all bad in its current form...just that it could be better. Here are some more concrete thoughts
  • There's a theology section at the top followed by a section on atonement at the bottom - shouldn't these belong together?
  • The history parts have a lot of information about some things (English politics, etc) but not as much about others. In particular, I think there's a lot of information about Arminius himself that is important, too much about Finney (who never claimed to be Arminian), and too little about Wesley.
  • The theology section used to be a misrepresentation of the five articles (e.g. limited depravity), which I changed to the actual Five articles...but there's still a lot that could be fleshed out and clarified.
  • I think a compare/contrast section would be immensely helpful - similar to what I did on the Reformed Arminianism site.
Don't think of this as a re-write as much as a combination of editing the material that is already there, adding some new, and merging the Reformed Arminianism article into this one. I think it was Flex who first mentioned merging that, and I thought it was a good idea. My intention isn't at all to rewrite in my own words, to add any bias, or to leave my individual stamp on the internet. Instead, my motivation comes from all the years I spent researching and debating straw arguments. Having studied and defended both sides, I feel that neither side is given its due justice by the other.
I'll do my best to flesh out these sections soon. Any suggestions for additions to the outline? David Schroder 19:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

David, overall, I appreciate your thoroughness in attempting to document the article, but I think the quotes are too long and too many. I deleted the quotes in the Calvinist section because I don't think they added much to the article. We just need a summary of the differences there, and the reader can read the full-up doctrine articles for more details. Similar comments apply to some other sections.

Next, I would suggest redoing your footnote scheme. You shouldn't number them explicitly (either with the parenthesized number or with "10-Wesley") because it's likely that some reference will be added or deleted at some point (as you'll note that I did), which will require renumbering all of them. You can use a pound sign to automatically number a list:

  1. Some reference
  2. Some other reference

The reference names could contain a number indicating which author reference you're citing (e.g., "Wesley-1", "Calvin-1"), but they shouldn't correspond to the overall order of the notes.

Finally, I left the bit on Christian Perfection intact, but I think it needs to be shortened and clearly specified how Wesley departs from the rest of Arminianism on that point. What would/did Arminius and other non-Wesleyans think of his doctrine of perfection?

Just some thoughts. Overall, I think it's good work. Kudos! --Flex 14:50, 6 March 2006 (UTC)